And Finally

A Swedish hotel chain has begun offering refunds to couples who get divorced within a year of staying at one of its hotels. The Countryside Hotels group’s offer is meant to be a “relationship guarantee”, with the chain offering to reimburse the cost of a two-night stay.

Indian opium farmers are as sick as a parrot at losing up to 10 per cent of their crop to flocks of feathered addicts which have adapted their behaviour to avoid detection. Stoned parrots are routinely now falling off their perches after gorging themselves on the pods of opium-yielding poppies.

A spate of toilet roll thefts in the Temple of Heaven park in Beijing has prompted the management to install a facial recognition toilet paper dispensing system to deter thieves. The newly installed machines scan visitors' faces for three seconds before issuing a ration of 24 to 27.5 inches of toile

A convicted drug dealer could have his sentence extended by 34 years after authorities caught his girlfriend trying to smuggle methamphetamine to him in jail – concealed in a Holy Bible. Stephen Jason Estes, 41, was in a county jail in Mississippi awaiting transfer to a state prison when his girlf

A man's illegal tryst with the chain-link fence along the edge of his property has apparently been brought to a tragic end. Eliodoro Estala, 32, has been charged with indecent exposure after neighbour Diana Vazquez turned over video footage which she said showed him consummating the unlikely dallian

Photo credit: New Zealand Police A bald killer serving life in a New Zealand jail has won a court battle to have his toupee returned to him with a High court judge ruling that by denying him his hairpiece prison authorities "ignored" the prisoner's "fundamental right to freedom of expression".

The New York Supreme Court, in a case unrelated to White House shenanigans, will sit today to rule on whether chimpanzees deserve to be accorded the rights of "personhood". Two chimpanzees, Tommy and Kiko, are to be represented by the Nonhuman Rights Project in the appellate division of the court, w

Police officers in a small town have started fetching McDonald's meals for inmates after their station's catering contract fell through. Those being held in the police station jail have been offered a choice of a hamburger, a cheeseburger or a veggie burger from a McDonald's outlet across the street

A Russian blogger has gone on trial for religious hate crimes because he played Pokémon Go in a church. Ruslan Sokolovsky, 22, was charged with inciting religious hatred after publishing video footage of him playing the popular mobile game in the Yekaterinburg church where the last Russian tsar was

Robbers who meticulously planned a sophisticated jewellery heist were left disappointed after realising that their haul consisted of bread. Qasim Hussain, 28, Hassan Mahmood, 26, and Naheem Hussain, 27, have been given hefty jail sentences for the theft of sandwiches, Tupperware and assorted groceri

A man is suing a pizza chain after his mobile phone was bombarded by a never-ending stream of promotional texts which he was unable to stop. The texts are said to have caused plaintiff Jonathan Anozie significant "anxiety, frustration and annoyance".

A lawyer was pulled from court in a panic yesterday after his trousers caught fire while he outlined his defence of a client accused of arson. Stephen Gutierrez was in the middle of arguing that his client's car combusted spontaneously and was not intentionally set alight.

A man on trial for the alleged theft of just $33 of cheese was found not guilty - but was jailed instead for absconding from the courtroom. Allen Cochran, 49, failed to return for the verdict after sitting through the one-day trial that exonerated him, The Virginian-Pilot reports.

More than three dozen workers are facing prosecution after convincing their colleagues to use fake fingertips to cover up their absences. Some 38 workers are in trouble for skipping work and having colleagues clock in for them - using silicone fingertips to fool a biometric attendance system.

Almost 160 couples in a village in eastern China have filed for divorce in order to gain more compensation for the demolition of their homes. Residents of Jiangbei village in Nanjing face mass eviction as the Chinese government plans to raze their village to build a new hi-tech zone, Nanjing Morning